Quality assurance program guidelines for application to and use by manufacturers of rail/guideway vehicles, buses, automatic train control systems, and their major subsystems

Guidelines are presented for a quality assurance system to be implemented by the manufacturer in support of designing, developing, fabricating, assembling, inspecting, testing, handling, and delivery of equipment being procured for use in public urban mass transit systems. The guidelines apply to this equipment when being procured for: (1) use in revenue service; (2) demonstration of systems that will be revenue producing or used by the public; (3) use as a prototype for follow-on operational/revenue producing equipment procurements; and (4) qualification tests

Immune Pathogenesis of Asymptomatic Chlamydia trachomatis Infections in the Female Genital Tract

Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) infections of the female genital tract, although frequently asymptomatic, are a major cause of fallopian-tube occlusion and infertility. Early stage pregnancy loss may also be due to an unsuspected and undetected CT infection. In vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated that this organism can persist in the female genital tract in a form undetectable by culture. The mechanism of tubal damage as well as the rejection of an embryo may involve an initial immune sensitization to the CT 60 kD heat shock protein (HSP), followed by a reactivation of HSP-sensitized lymphocytes in response to the human HSP and the subsequent release of inflammatory cytokines. The periodic induction of human HSP expression by various microorganisms or by noninfectious mechanisms in the fallopian tubes of women sensitized to the CT HSP may eventually result in tubal scarring and occlusion. Similarly, an immune response to human HSP expression during the early stages of pregnancy may interfere with the immune regulatory mechanisms required for the maintenance of a semiallogeneic embryo

Rationality in Social Work: A Critical Examination

This paper critically examines the definitions and criteria for rationality in social work in light of western philosophic tradition. Rationality in social work is seen as instrumental (means-oriented) and individualistic rather than substantive (ends-oriented) and social. A set of criteria which expand the basis for making rationality claims in social work is suggested. These additional criteria aim to serve the valued social justice ends of social work practice

Induction of heat shock protein expression in cervical epithelial cells by human semen.

OBJECTIVE: The 70kD heat shock protein (Hsp70), induced when cells are subjected to environmental stress, prevents the denaturation and incorrect folding of polypeptides and may expedite replication and transmission of DNA and RNA viruses. We analyzed whether messenger RNA (mRNA) for Hsp70 was expressed following exposure of a cultured human cervical cell line (HeLa cells) to human semen or in cervical cells from sexually active women. STUDY DESIGN: HeLa cells were co-cultured with a 1:50 dilution of semen from four men or with purified spermatozoa or cell-free seminal fluid. Endocervical swabs were acquired at mid-cycle from 53 women. Heat shock protein 70 mRNA was detected by a reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction utilizing specific primer pairs and analysis on agarose gels. In cervical cells Hsp70 mRNA was measured identically followed by hybridization with an Hsp70-specific internal probe and detection by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Cervical immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies to the human Hsp70 were determined by ELISA. RESULTS: HeLa cell-semen co-culture resulted in the induction of Hsp70 mRNA. In addition, cell-free seminal plasma and motile sperm incubated individually with HeLa cells also induced this mRNA. Heat shock protein 70 mRNA was detected in 28 (52.8%) of 53 endocervical samples obtained from women at various time points following intercourse. The percentage of samples expressing this mRNA was 37.5% at less than 10 hours, 64.3% at 10 hours, 70% at 11 hours, and between 36% and 50% at later times after semen exposure. The detection of cervical IgA antibodies to the Hsp70 was highly associated with Hsp70 gene transcription. CONCLUSION: Human semen induces transcription of Hsp70 in cervical epithelial cells

Immune Recognition of the 60kD Heat Shock Protein: Implications for Subsequent Fertility

The 60kD heat shock protein (hsp60) is a highly conserved protein and a dominant antigen of most pathogenic bacteria. In some women, chronic or repeated upper genital tract infections with Chlamydia trachomatis, and possibly with other microorganisms, induces immune sensitization to epitopes of hsp60 that are present in both the microbial and human hsp60. Once a woman becomes sensitized to these conserved epitpes, any subsequent induction of human or bacterial hsp60 expression will reactivate hsp60-sensitized lymphocytes and initiate a pro-inflammatory immune response. Hsp60 is expressed during the early stages of pregnancy, by both the embryo and the maternal decidua. We examined, therefore, whether women who were sensitized to hsp60 experienced less successful pregnancy outcomes compared to women who were not sensitized to this antigen. In women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF), the presence of cervical IgA antibodies reactive with the C. trachomatis hsp60 correlated with implantation failure after embryo transfer. Further analysis revealed that an immunodominant epitope for these IgA antibodies was an hsp60 epitope shared between C. trachomatis and man. In subsequent studies of women not undergoing IVF, cervical IgA antibodies to the human hsp60 were identified in 13 of 91 reproductive age women. This antibody was most prevalent in those women with a history of primary infertility (p = 0.003). In addition, cervical anti-hsp60 IgA correlated with the detection of the pro-inflammatory cytokines interferon-γ (p = 0.001) and tumor necrosis factor-α (p = 0.02) in the cervix. Conversely, women with proven fertility had the highest prevalence of the anti-inflammatory cytokine, interleukin 10, in their cervices (p = 0.001). In an analysis of serum samples in a third study, women with a history of two or more consecutive first trimester spontaneous abortions had a higher prevalence (p = 0.01) of IgG antibodies to the human hsp60 (36.8%) than did age matched fertile women (11.1%) or women with primary infertility (11.8%). Immune sensitization to epitopes expressed by the human hsp60 may reduce the probability of a successful pregnancy outcome due to reactivation of hsp60-reactive lymphocytes, induction of a pro-inflammatory cytokine response and interference with early embryo development and/or implantation

Detection of Ureaplasma urealyticum in Second-Trimester Amniotic Fluid by Polymerase Chain Reaction Correlates with Subsequent Preterm Labor and Delivery

Ureaplasma urealyticum is the microorganism most frequently isolated from the amniotic fluid of women in preterm labor. The relationship between intra-amniotic U. urealyticum in healthy second-trimester pregnant women and subsequent pregnancy outcome was investigated. Transabdominal amniotic fluid obtained from 254 asymptomatic women at 15-17 weeks' gestation were tested by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). U. urealyticum was identified in 29 subjects (11.4%). A subsequent preterm labor occurred in 17 U. urealyticum-positive women (58.6%), compared with 10 (4.4%) U. urealyticum-negative women (P<.0001). Preterm birth was documented in 7 (24.1%) U. urealyticum-positive women compared with only 1 U. urealyticum-negative woman (0.4%) (P<.0001). U. urealyticum-positive women also had a higher prevalence of preterm labor in a prior pregnancy (20.7%) than did the negative women (2.7%; P=.0008). PCR testing of second-trimester amniotic fluid for U. urealyticum can identify women at risk for subsequent preterm labor and deliver

Few-Shot Single-View 3-D Object Reconstruction with Compositional Priors

The impressive performance of deep convolutional neural networks in single-view 3D reconstruction suggests that these models perform non-trivial reasoning about the 3D structure of the output space. However, recent work has challenged this belief, showing that complex encoder-decoder architectures perform similarly to nearest-neighbor baselines or simple linear decoder models that exploit large amounts of per category data in standard benchmarks. On the other hand settings where 3D shape must be inferred for new categories with few examples are more natural and require models that generalize about shapes. In this work we demonstrate experimentally that naive baselines do not apply when the goal is to learn to reconstruct novel objects using very few examples, and that in a \emph{few-shot} learning setting, the network must learn concepts that can be applied to new categories, avoiding rote memorization. To address deficiencies in existing approaches to this problem, we propose three approaches that efficiently integrate a class prior into a 3D reconstruction model, allowing to account for intra-class variability and imposing an implicit compositional structure that the model should learn. Experiments on the popular ShapeNet database demonstrate that our method significantly outperform existing baselines on this task in the few-shot setting

Detection of the human 70-kD and 60-kD heat shock proteins in the vagina: relation to microbial flora, vaginal pH, and method of contraception.

The expression of the 60-kD and 70-kD heat shock proteins (hsp60 and hsp70) in the vaginas of 43 asymptomatic women of reproductive age with or without a history of recurrent vulvovaginitis (RVV) were compared. Vaginal wash samples were obtained and assayed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for human hsp60 and hsp70. Heat shock protein 70 was not detected in any of the 19 women with no history of RVV, and hsp60 was present in only one woman in this group. In contrast, in the RVV group, 11 (45.8%) were hsp60-positive and eight (33.3%) were hsp70-positive. The presence of either heat shock protein in the vagina was associated with an elevated vaginal pH (>4.5). Bacterial vaginosis or Candida was identified in some of the asymptomatic subjects; their occurrence was significantly higher in women with vaginal hsp70 than in women with no heat shock proteins. Oral contraceptives were used by 35.7% of subjects who were negative for vaginal heat shock proteins, as opposed to only 12.5% of women who were positive for hsp70 and 8.3% who were positive for hsp60. Expression of heat shock proteins in the vagina may indicate an altered vaginal environment and a susceptibility to vulvovaginal symptoms

Pregnancy Outcome Following Pelvic Infection

To determine whether a previous pelvic infection has an effect on the outcome of a subsequent pregnancy, we identified women with a diagnosis of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), amnionitis, and postpartum or postabortal endometritis-salpingitis by a retrospective chart review of all patients admitted to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center between 1975 and 1977 and between 1985 and 1988. Antimicrobial regimens effective against Chlamydia trachomatis were initiated in 1985. Controls were randomly selected patients presenting during the same time period for routine examinations who had normal Pap smears and no infections. Both groups were comparable for age, race, gravity, and parity. Differences were evaluated by chi square analysis, using the Yates correction factor. We identified 183 women with a history of the above infections who subsequently conceived, and 82 controls. There were no differences in outcome between the two index groups. Term vaginal deliveries occurred in 14.2% of the women with a prior pelvic infection and in 56% of the controls (P < 0.001). Among the 97 women who had had PID, 21 (21.6%) had a spontaneous abortion in the subsequent pregnancy, as opposed to 6 (7.3%) of the controls (P = 0.013). In addition, eight of the women with PID (but no controls) went into preterm labor (P = 0.021). An increased incidence of preterm labor (P = 0.001) was also observed in women with a history of amnionitis. A history of endometritis was not associated with an increased prevalence of abnormal outcome in subsequent pregnancies. PID and amnionitis may adversely affect the outcome of subsequent pregnancies